


A Hairsbreadth From Death

by Hanahaki_Blood



Category: The Hitcher (1986)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Car Sex, I Don't Even Know, Jim hates and loves it all at the same time, John is a cryptid, John is an ancient being, M/M, Porn With Plot, Post-Canon, Rough Oral Sex, a little at least, au-ish, because I said so, experiences made during the French Revolution, he is a confused boy, past attempts at murder, what if, yes - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:54:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25434973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hanahaki_Blood/pseuds/Hanahaki_Blood
Summary: John took it as such; the world could die, the sun falling on it. Humanity’s yoke, as he knew it, could end and they’d still have been as alone as they were now, here, in the confined space of this car. Ryder preferred it this way, as it catered to his plans. For ages, centuries even, these plans had been altered by nothing but his needs mostly venturing into realms of trickery, schemes,  bloodshed and, now, carnal exaggeration.His appetite to kill had not famished but thinned out in favor of another kind of hunger.
Relationships: Jim Halsey/John Ryder
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	A Hairsbreadth From Death

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hiver_Noir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hiver_Noir/gifts).



There was something about Jim Halsey that made John Ryder falter in his mind's steps, and it might not even have been particular in nature. 

When he rolled his eyes in a half-lidded daze, the sip of a second poured between thin rosebud lips, at an instruction John gave before remembering who exactly he was bound to listen to. 

When he stared out of the window to follow the sunset colors getting sucked down earth's grid, cheek tucked in the seatbelt loop with the trust of a child, the webbing leaving its temporary print on the sad flesh. 

When he wolfed down his burgers once they stopped by a roadhouse, chewing forgotten to the point the swallow turned to choke-up, turned to water grab, turned to John putting the glass _just_ out of reach for one minute or two to see the struggle on the youth’s face, how stuffed skin produced a bulged bluish hue.

Or when, as he did now, lay curled in the back seat, soon about to yawn, stretch and bring each bone back in order that had slightly diverted due to sleeping in this position all night.

John waited for it to happen, born an observer though the act of being born lay so far from his mind that it had become difficult to grasp the concept of him ever _not_ been in existence. He thought, not without a pinch of granted self-indulgence, how more crowded and ill the world would be if not for his deeds to better and crop all that was unneeded, undemanding, unfit for survival, latching onto already depleted resources like leeches on a famished corpse whether in good intention or bloated will. Nature solved it best, with animals and instinct, no grudges held or blood spilled for fun alone. But humans had long chosen to lack such grace in favor of fucking, eating, conquering; killing themselves and each other to fuck and eat and conquer further, with no restriction but mortality to keep their crazed minds in their crazed little cages. 

There was no disillusionment in the way John saw the imbalance take shape, the ass crack of doom gaping wider as more years passed down the drain, ever on the imminent brink of almost-disaster yet still, somehow, continuing its run like derailed clockwork. 

It wasn’t much he did. Not like he and his bretheren had done in the old times, sinking cities into oceans, eating their children, poisoning their wells and corn. He wasn’t specifically out for the leaders, the double-a-fucktits commandment. But since he was all that was left, he wouldn’t have turned his gaze aside had such scum driven up his direction, welcomed by the clammy embrace of decay. Sure, the police contingent deemed correspondingly larger in these matters, but size wasn’t everything; in fact, it would have none but enlargened the smoking pile of junk to leave behind when he turned his back from the scene.

He wasn’t exactly _allowed_ to die per se. Life herself forbad the deed since someone had to do the cleanup after all. Who’d have held it against him that he chose to have a little fun on the side while doing it?

Dusk crawled across the land, feverish orange and blushing rose on bland soil cracked dry by the heat. When the light reached the hood of their Mustang, it took a peek through the windshield to catch on the soft red rim around Jim’s neck. An afterthought of last night’s activities. John hummed at the sight granted by the rearview mirror, sated for the moment while it lasted, but keen for a bite all the same.

„You’d make a beautiful corpse like this.“ The words flew his lips with gentle rush, a roaring echo in their confined space – but then again, there was no reason to lie or be shy for. He described what he saw, and what he saw did please him enough to vocalize it, matter-of-fact, skin flushed or not (or so he told himself).

Jim blinked lazily, offering flitters of dark brown under lashes still wet from sleep. He pulled a hand through his tousled hair merely to have its strands swing back into his forehead like before. A hopeless undertaking with neither gel nor other products involved. He did anyway, each morning, in exhaustion. It was the habit of trying, well aware to never succeed only to do it again for comfort, the mere assurance of a routine that wasn’t supposed to change. It was Sysiphos’ rebirth trading the stone for a swipe of hair. John, who had met Sysiphos ten years before the gods did, inexplicably adored the reminder.

„The last time I checked, I still had a pulse,“ Jim murmured without fire. He sat up straight, twitched, made an undignified sound that caught in his throat as the shallow aftermath of pain ran through his body like an arrow. 

John peeked at him with a mixture of inarticulate warmth and apathy. Half a year had passed and more than five cars in-between including the current vehicle, each of them stolen by both, driven in shifts by both, used in ways a car shouldn’t be used for (by both). Needless to say, it was a curious set of habits they had grown accustomed to.

John took it as such; the world could die, the sun falling on it. Humanity’s yoke, as he knew it, could end and they’d still have been as alone as they were now, here, in the confined space of this car. Ryder preferred it this way, as it catered to his plans. For ages, centuries even, these plans had been altered by nothing but his needs mostly venturing into realms of trickery, schemes, bloodshed and, now, carnal exaggeration. His appetite to kill had not famished but thinned out in favor of another kind of hunger. He tilted his head back, his side-glance slowly dragging across Jim’s neck like a whip, bare and invitingly unprotected. He blamed the kid, naturally. Still called him a kid in mind despite the things they’d done, naturally. After all, there was no one else available to point his finger at – or the burden his desires left him with.

Before he quite realized it himself, the wish to reach out and put a stray curl behind Jim’s ear emerged before his inner eye solid as rock. His hair had grown longer, two inches or so, more wild and unkempt as days went by far from civilization. They should probably have it cut in the next town they come through. Then again, whenever the issue had been prodded at by Jim before, John stayed fairly relucant to the idea. He liked the man Jim began to grow into. A little more unhinged, a bit unruly and worn-out, a lot less brushed and and scuffed and squeaky-clean-social. Less like the people they passed by and more like the murderer he ran after like a dog gone rabid by hunger. A development far too amusing for John to take the risk and hinder its stage.

„Sleep is only a hairsbreadth from death,“ he said.

„Then you should have strangled me while you still had the chance,“ Jim countered, turning his head which had the curl fall out of place again proclaiming rebellion. „Kinda suprised it’s none of your kinks.“ 

Sleep still had its loose grip on him, lulling and numbing his sense for danger. Again, the memory of when they first met and him shaking like a leaf danced clear as dew before John’s eyes, comparing, analyzing, taking notes without mention. Now, shakes exchanged for jerks and shrugs by day while quivers, moans and pleads heralded the night. Curses, too, all the time, no need to split bright from darkness here. No need to spare attention for anything but each other. That’s how he liked it best.

"Hand me the map, will you.“ Jim's gaze was still bleary but locked up front. John hesitated if only to mock him a little before he leaned over to go through the glove compartment, protruding the crumbled roadmap the kid had insisted on buying months ago. He had never been in need of a map; as was his nature there was no specific location in mind he would drive to. Wherever there were streets to cross, paths to tread and victims to find, he would appear. Food and drink proved none of his main concerns nor did new clothing or a functioning car heater. However, all of this mattered greatly for Jim Halsey who, tragically human as he was, depended on all these factors to a wavering amount. It deemed fair to say he kept particular fondness for the knowledge of where he was at any given time of day, as if a position calculated from a satellites’ screenshot would ground him in the world, give him verification of self and a place to call his own. At first, he might have only done it in case he needed to find his way around should his attempt at escape succeed. But now it had all but dwindled down to another routine faking control. Humans were exasperately funny creatures like that. They didn't learn. They just coped.

John threw the map over his shoulder without looking, watching in the rear-view mirror how Jim caught it, unmistaken relief flashing across his face. For Jim, this pad of paper was an anchor while lost on sea. That they hadn’t set foot out of the Chihuahuan Desert as of now only deepened the irony.

The echoed rustle of unfolding paper threw itself back twice from the closed windows. Jim’s face disappeared behind the continent’s outline, nimble, unscarred fingers running along the sunburnt edges.

„So. South, was it? There better be a gas station along the way or we’ll get stranded,“ he murmured in warning. Putting the seat in a rear position,John leaned back so that they were on eye-level, and folded his arms behind his head.

„No need to rush.“

„You never rush,“ Jim retorted drily. A statement, factual and blunt, no secret endearment underwritten. The left corner of John’s mouth lifted.

„Except that _one_ time.“

„Yeah. That _one_ time.“ It didn’t sound too nostalgic. John snickered.

„Well. I don’t have to chase you anymore.“

„You sound sad about that.“ The boy’s fairly suspicious glance peeked over the map’s torn rim. John shrugged.

„It was fun while it lasted.“ Jim raised a brow.

„They put you in handcuffs,“ he pointed out, however careful to give any further indication in case John was in the mood to hunt him for sport. John sighed and uncrossed his arms to look at his naked wrists in solemn memory.

„Had worse. Handcuffs are like jewelry; sparkle in the light, easy to unlock and take off. Ever got your head pushed under a guillotine blade? Now that’s something else.“

Widened eyes brimmingly filled with irritation told him that the idea alone was too foreign for the youth to understand it properly. There was no room for guillotines within his hardly used up lifespan unless found in museums encrumbed with dust or a gruelling historical action flick in the cinema. Nevertheless, his voice carried the necessary weight of fearful respect one owed this apparatus for its sole reputation. So fearful indeed that John regretted not having a specimen of such in his trunk to put Jim’s arm under it and revel in the screams as the blade sliced down.

At the guillotine’s prime time it had been easier for John to murder than usual; that was until he had nearly strung up one of the rebel leaders instead of an aristocrat while wearing clothes more costly than common people were ready to forgive him. What to say for his defense? He had set eyes on that coat for a while back then – and Robespierre’s exaggerating speeches had become a burden to listen to. It wasn’t that far-fetched to say his near-kill had been a matter of public service as well as one of self-pleasure.

„How the hell did you survive _that_?“ John rubbed at the back of his neck as if he’d still feel the steel blade’s pitiless cold cut along his goosebumps as the crowd underneath cheered loud enough to mute the rumble of their children’s empty bellies. He had smiled at them. It might have followed into their nightmares. He hoped so.

„I didn’t.“ It wasn’t a smug remark, no joke either. Jim, incredulous and probably waiting for an explanation that would put the details in order like pearls on a string, received no further reply. Instead, John put his seatbelt out of the way and let it dangle to the side. „The blade cut down to the last sinew. My head drooped facing the basket’s filling of other poor bastards’ heads. I felt the urge to say _bonjour_. Courtesies, you see? Only a coward would lose them.“

Lifting himself off his seat, he picked the map out of Jim’s hands and placed it on the dashboard, blacking out the sun. He leant back then, throat bared, scratchy with stubble yet unadorned by scars that would have verified his tale. Drawing his legs apart he never broke eye-contact as he pulled the zipper of his pants down. Slowly. „Are you a coward, Jim?“

Jim stared, face blank, the map’s protection gone. They’d been here before, the foreplay’s foreplay. However, John usually didn’t beat around the bush in these matters; except when he was in the mood to test Jim. Depending on said mood, these tests would range from wearing a blindfold while he followed him through the night to being fucked raw from behind as he watched another man’s blood spill in streams out of his cut throat before him, eyes like marbles, skin pudgy white. He remembered how the knife had torn through until the head dipped back, barely hanging onto a piece of sinew as it bared the bone, windpipe and remaining flesh. He lowered his gaze.

„Being a coward isn’t what put me in this situation,“ he said quietly.

„And what did?“ John sounded actually curious. Jim averted his gaze. He rarely did so anymore.

„Being naive.“ A mordant verdict by a culprit too young.

"Hmm." Leisurely, John broke the answer into its unspoken parts merely to put them back together to a puzzle of his own making. "You're not naive anymore. In any sense,“ he said, enjoying to see how it made Jim writhe inside. „So there's no excuse left.“ Jim flinched as if he had been slapped. Maybe he had already expected something similar. Maybe he was only startled by the way his own thoughts took deafening shape through the mouth of another. John doubted he’d ever truly get used to how well he could read him. 

„I’m not excusing anything!“ the boy spat, face scrunched up in a scrowl. He sat up, hugging himself, clenched fists pressed into the crumpled fabric of his shirt. Every remnant of drowsiness had gone in an instant, replaced by the panic of being exposed to the point of no return. John’s eyes narrowed to amused slits.

„Are you sure?“

„Dead sure.“ Any venom would have tasted sweeter.

„Then why do you look as if you’re about to spill your stomach contents on the upholstery?“ Brown eyes widened. 

„I’m _not_.“ Like every wanna-be grown-up, Jim was comically easy to offend. John chuckled.

„Is it the image of my head in a basket?“

„What if I don’t want to do what you want me to do anymore?“ was the cold reply.

John craned his head (still attached, re-attached; didn’t matter, really) as if to show the non-existent line where the blade should have gone right through, studying him more intently.

„Then I won’t tell you how I got myself out of this perilous situation.“

"That's all?"

"Isn't that enough?"

„In France?“

„ _Oui, mon petite_.“ Jim shifted in his seat, expression guarded still yet his arms didn’t pose as much of a tourniquet as they had a few breaths ago. It helped the color rush back into his skull-white knuckles, leaving his body open for attack. It was clear he had expected a more lethal threat than that, allowing him to bolt through the door and be alone with himself ten minutes or so to rearrange his morals once again. But John never did what one expected him to do. He took these expectations and stripped them bare, mimicked them to essential degree. 

Maybe that was the reason he was so good at killing people out of the blue. They couldn’t help but be hypnotized by his charade of normalcy till it wasn’t a charade anymore. Until he dropped it all the same.

Everyone wore masks in the end, aware of the fact or not. John had simply acquired too many to count so he put on three or four so that he confused even himself.

„You just said you didn’t,“ Jim said tentatively, blinking the rise of nervousness away that had already manifested in the perspiration of his skin, eager companion it was.

„I surely wouldn’t be here elsewise. As you can see, I’m alive now. Head on.“ The statement was followed by an inviting gesture towards the vast that hung between his legs. „If you were to give me some head as well, I might be so kind and show you how much.“

Jim stilled, spit just about to be swallowed gone stuck in his throat. As his mind raced, he felt the muscles of his back jitter and knead, preparing to follow what was asked of them by so much as recognizing the glint in John’s eyes of phantom blue; not of own command but its sick replica forced upon his senses by habit and routine, unable to rid of it, unable to fight it for long. As known from experience, these cramps and twists would only quieten down once he yielded to the task. He had long given up to put in words how much the betrayal of his own body disgusted him so he didn’t try.

Should be one thing named to have been effected by the necessity of their months spent together, it would have been the blood-woven habit of following orders when they were given. Of course, John rarely made them sound like the orders they were, but that didn't change their nature or the consequences of ignoring them. Although Jim's expression still posed a balancing act between delusion and free will, he did as he was told. Their "little distractions“ as John had once called them, were by no means the worst or most unpleasant acts Jim had been made to do thanks to this man. If he had been honest with himself, truly, he would have nearly admitted them to be one of the few pleasurable changes their everyday life had to offer. Besides, it wasn't as if killing had crippled away his senses or turned him to stone; he was and remained a teenager, blushing 19 and hungry for every conceivable experience the physical was able to offer up. And John, for all this exaggeratingly mad, supernatural flair about him, was not ethereal enough to repel his body as much as he did his mind.

Of course, John was neither blind nor oblivious to the inner struggle the boy went through. To say he did not care wouldn't have quite grasped the lavish way his thoughts curled around the reactions he could coax out of Jim with but the mere quirk of a brow.

"Good.“ His voice posed a long, cold finger running down the nape of Jim’s neck that urged him to sit up straighter. „And take your pants off first." 

Jim didn’t so much as flinch before he complied, aware how refusal would have posed pointless one way or another. Though his hands shook with the task habit made quick work of the belt, having his jeans unceremoniously drop to his ankles, underwear following right behind. Outside, the world was at ease with stasis, the desert’s carcass being grilled by the morning sun. Even if the car windows had been open, no gust would have promised a cool relief to clear his head or bring up the excuse for a walk. He was on his own here, and though he hadn’t done anything crucial yet he knew his body would ache by the end of it, each patch of skin carrying the renegade memory of what they did. Sometimes he wondered if they were caught by the police again, how much into detail he’d need to go about their activities in order to have his lawyer declare Stockholm Syndrome as the youth’s lifeline out of prison. The thought alone made him hot all over.

Throat dry as parchment, he swallowed thickly as he stretched, knees balancing on the backseat’s edge as his upper body got between the front seats, reaching out to pull the full length of John’s half-hard cock into the open. It was a real-man’s cock, so much Jim could tell and always be amazed by the sheer fact of it. No teeth cradling the girth, no barbed-wire wrapped around the pinkish glans like a traitor’s crown throttling the flesh. Jim couldn’t remember what he had expected the first time John pushed down his briefs with an uncaring hand, nothing but dirty streetlamp’s shine illuminating his movements – for it to bite him? A hidden gun shooting his eye out? In a way, it had, and for the sake of fairness he could as well have suckled on a rifle barrel for that matter; phallic-shaped or not, skin, coal or metal, it deemed a weapon all the same. 

It wasn’t as long as it was thick, an uncut, heavy weight blazing hot against his sweaty palm. Jim felt the blood rush into his ears burning them up and how damnably cool the air lingered on his exposed crotch in contrast. He couldn’t say whether he was excited, ashamed or both. Shuddering, his tongue darted out to lick a long, wet strap from base to tip, reintroducing his senses to the familiar salty, primal taste.

The position he was in deemed unusual to how he had learned to handle blow-jobs, but it was nothing too complicated to overcome. He thought how back in school his maths teacher had praised him for always considering at least three creative ways to tackle an issue soon as it presented itself. If she could’ve only seen him now; she had been prone to tachycardia anyway.

He spit into his hand and crawled forward, knees dug into the cushion as he stretched and let his head hover over John’s lap. He earned a grunt low as thunder when he grabbed the flesh unceremoniously and gave it a few rough tugs to bring it to full hardness before he dived down.

All the while John's gaze burned a fine seam of fire across his body, starting from the unblemished soles of his feet to the back of his knees smooth and penetrable, lingering there. He could almost see how traces of ember ran further up the round shape of his buttocks high up in the air; coccyx, backbone, shoulder blades beneath washed-out cotton, the nape of his neck illuminated by the morning sun having fully climbed the skyline. It was shameful. He had never felt more seen. More _alive_.

„I get the impression you like sucking cock.“ It was said thoughtfully, like examining a butterfly climbing out of its cocoon rather than watching Jim drag his lips along the vein protruding near his cock’s head before he opened his mouth to suck it down in earnest. John let out a satisfied growl at the wet heat engulfing him. „Whether it‘s mine you’re fond of or someone else‘s would be just as good I don‘t know, but it’s not like I’d give you the chance to ever find out.“ There was no cruelty in his voice. Cruelty, true, intentful, sardonic cruelty, was something Jim could have used to hold against him in the future. John, for reasons unknown and most probably cryptic, was careful not to let it come to that. 

He was many things. Mocking, scoffing, bloody terrifying on demand. But he was never outright cruel. Which, then again, was the cruelest thing he could have done to Jim Halsey who’d have given everything to be allowed the thought that he was currently sucking a serial killer’s cock due to being forced into it; not because he might have grown to like its heady taste and weight on his tongue or how his pink lips stretched around the flesh that had become constant in ways he didn’t dare to describe, fearing the words used would be too close to feigning adoration. 

Or, which was most embarrassing, the crushing feeling of emptiness he was left with soon that John decided he had enough before he’d fill him in other ways.

Inhaling through his nose, Jim hollowed out his cheeks to take him deeper, short-bitten nails digging into John’s clothed thighs to steady himself. Traces of musk, sweat, old blood and desert sand engulfed his senses added by the pulsing flesh as it clogged his throat. He felt like gagging yet surpressed the urge. Heart hammering against his collarbone, he started to bob his head up and down, creating a sloppy rhythm that left him dizzy but unrelenting, defying oxygen in favor of feeling the slightest strain in a murderer’s legs to buck up into the hot cavern of his bruised mouth. It wasn’t so much the length but the thickness that gave him a hard time to accommodate his pace; in a minute saliva ran down his chin, another it took to have his jaw ache with the stretch. A low-born instinct had him growl in frustration, producing a muffled sound between flesh and labor. 

John called it obscene in mind, silently scolding such poor manners; it was not proper to talk with your mouth full. He leant back, shifting the weight of his upper body so that Jim had more space to settle between his thighs. Like pushing a dipping bird’s beak into the water, the gentle anvil of John’s palm placed on the back of Jim’s head, urging him forward. His own head tipped back with eyes shut as the kid’s complaint promptly turned to a wet choke.

„While you do, you can forget where you‘re at, the situation you‘re in. Maybe it’s an oral fixation. Maybe you think if you please me enough, one day I‘ll set you free. Or whatever your kind _defines_ as freedom.“ He sighed. The roughened pads of his fingers trailed across Jim’s spine beneath outwashed cotton, leaving threads of cooling saliva in their wake that wound lower while he spoke. It was funny, really, how the boy’s body trembled beneath his attention, eager in mind not to be too obvious about it when, on the other hand, it could barely contain its own reactions. John smiled thinly. „The problem is, Jim, I like you like this. I like you bent over, breathing and shaking. I like the sounds you make when you fuck yourself on your fingers, wishing it was me.“ 

The first knuckle slid in fluently, surpassing the flesh with practiced ease. Jim’s throat contracted violently around his cock in reply, surprise quickly merging into foreboding of what to come, and how, and who.

„To be precise, I like it when you‘re mine. I don’t plan on changing that part in the near future.“ Any opinion Jim would have voiced was drowned out by John shoving three fingers in at once, starting a rhythm so ruthless it had him claw his nails into the fabric covering John’s thighs. He squirmed, caught between meeting what was given and the fervent reminder lodgedinto his brain not to bite down. He had done so once and it had earned him three hours of being bound in the car trunk nearly pissing himself in fear he’d spent the night like this. He did not want to repeat the lesson.

Challenging fate, John’s fingers moved further, breaching and prodding at the delicate bundle of nerves with a relentless sense of play, having Jim form muffled curses at ecstasy electrifying his nerves. His own cock hung hard and untouched in the air, weeping fluid that dropped into the dark forgotten. First tears of overwhelmet welling up in his eyes, Jim sucked John down deep as he possibly could catering the fragrant hope for mercy, gagging as his hips moved on own accord for whatever meager space they were given to act in. It was whorish. It was filthy. It was glorious to yield to.

John less saw than felt the ring of muscles twitch and clench around him in further reply, followed by the tiniest flutter of compliance as the stretch lost some of its burn, making room for sensations of more promising nature. Concurrently, he sensed his own high approach, the familiar liquid fire pooling hot in his lower belly. He wasn’t one to let the boy off the hook so easily however; especially not if he’d been entertaining enough to deserve a proper reward.

Boring his hand in Jim’s hair he pulled him up and away, the unwilling release of his cock accompanied by a wet pop that resounded in the car’s vacuum like a gun shot. It were these moments he’d let an iota of his true strength glimpse through, handling the slender body in his hands like a paper doll. As it deemed custom between them, Jim didn’t exactly find himself in the position to rebel.

The shirt which was already missing two buttons prior the occasion was practically torn off Jim’s body, sending rags flying into the dark space that the back seat had been reduced too. Jim watched their loss with parted lips still lined white with traces of John’s precum, sucking in the much-needed air absent-mindedly.

„You‘ll have to buy me a new one once we‘re in town! I can‘t walk around like this.“ He did dare sound hoarse and pouty at the same time while he struggled out of the last remains on his own with the usual seeds of panic and lechery sown beneath. John, feeling generous more often than he’d be willing to admit, forgave the faux-pas, too enarmoured by the rising blush in Jim‘s cheeks the more skin was bared. His reaction of being exposed to hungry eyes never quite changed; a dose of ragged breath, the automatic twist of fear painting his features derailed and pure as a child’s, the unwilling jerk of his arms aiming to cover what’s easy to wound, mark and belittle. John would have liked to say he’d maim, burn and cut to see it again as well as maim, burn and cut those that had taught the boy to be ashamed and afraid of showing his body rather than giving into the careful control John wielded as surely as he did a knife. But since killing was what he did best, following what raging ghosts of past had carved into these borrowed bones, he deemed it a cheap attempt at praise to voice, so he didn‘t. Instead, he reached low to cup two handfuls of Jim‘s plump ass, squeezing firmly as he shoved him further down and into him. The contact was rough, close to pain but never defining as such. As it should be.

Every time it came to this, the killer and the kid entered a limbo within which every rule was meant to abandon itself, or, which was more likely, never had the opportunity to be granted existence since the cornerstone of civilization couldn’t take foot in this dimension. 

„Can‘t you?“ John teased, hands running down Jim’s spine like water. „Or don‘t want to?“

Jim twitched, instinct having him lean into the touch before his brain could decide differently.

„Unless you want others to see what they can‘t have?“ he added. What had been meant to pronounce feisty echoed weakly in the aftermath.John mulled the question over **.**

„That's an argument,“ he agreed eventually, if only pleased to have Jim naked on his lap at last, added by him bringing up the fact of ownership without being forced to. Regardless of the truth that he’s had plenty to break, choke and rearrange in the image of disaster already, he couldn’t help but be astonished by the exceptional pets humans make once in a while; futile and determined, solid and weak in most primal ways his own kind wouldn’t so much as sneer at. John clicked his tongue at the thought only to have Jim lift his eyes up to him in response; open, dark and bare as his skin. Bending down, John planted a kiss on his temple, ignoring the twitch of remnant fear. Almost, but not perfect. Yet.

„I‘ve trained you well, didn’t I?“ he murmured into his hair. He breathed in the scent, a mundane melange of road dust, the musk of arousal and sweat. His teeth bared in answer, itching to bite and gulp it all down to nothing. Before the taste of flesh would reach his tongue, however, Jim’s voice cut through.

"You asked me to discard the pants first to leave them intact. So that no one but you will look at me the way you're looking at me right now.“ With mouth still swollen red and voice worked up from choking on John’s cock moments ago, he shouldn’t have been allowed to sound this sure, but did. “Who is training whom?" 

John tsked. His lips pulled back over his teeth. Not yet, then. Not yet.

"My boy, you might have forgotten what position you're in,“ he drawled, hands grasping Jim’s cheeks to pull them apart and put himself between. “Perhaps this will jog your memory."

He entered him with one, harsh thrust, breaching the flesh like Moses parted the sea. Loosely prepared as the boy’s hole was along with his cock slicked by saliva, it was a slide teetering on the definition of brutal and yet never quite so. His eyes closed, a silent _O_ forming on his lips as he was engulfed by tight, pulsing heat imminently clamping around him. If it was so eager to hold him in place, it couldn’t be all that bad. Further proof lent Jim’s stuttered moan to echo and fill the car with sweet despair, his body lithe and trembling under John’s hands that kept his position. Not to hinder his escape – these times lay far behind them – but rather to steady his plight. They’d been playing this game for two months in total (maybe three even, a clock is of no matter here). There was no telling how it had begun. A furtive glance, a touch that would last too long, hands that reached lower than they should, at night, in passing, while the day bathed them bright and blinding for everyone to see; where no eyes blinked and many heads turned to watch them step out of the shops, spattered with stranger blood. John had started it – this was one fact to admit. It didn’t mean he blamed the boy any less for what happened next, and less so for what was strung to happen again. 

It had been Jim who pulled the brakes and held the car door open for him in the pouring rain. It had been Jim who, in the meager attempt to save his life, threw him out of the same car shortly afterwards, jittery and teary-eyed like a beaten dog. A door that didn’t close properly, a chance embedded in a faulty construction had bought him the time it took to send John on a goose chase, making him feel more alive than he had in years, decades – whatever measure of time currently dealt the upper hand in this millennium anyways.

John ran a broad tongue over Jim’s auricle, chasing his shudder along the ever amusing realization how he sank deeper into him with his struggle, accomodating to each shift and quake till they moved in frantic, luscious sync. The doors were firmly closed, the bolt in the gear box pushed forward. The rain had not come for days and no one in their right mind would have stopped by to glance into a car so far off the road. No escape this time, then. Though it had become doubtful whether Jim still wanted to flee or not, judging by the noise he made rhythmically interrupted by his organism’s chase for oxygen. Ever eager for coaxing out new variations, John’s mouth lowered its aim, his half-opened lips tracing hot across the side of Jim’s throat, his pulse so close he could feel its erratic beat bellow against the tender skin. A slow, long lick following the carotid earned him a whimper of defeat in an array of noise, deft fingers rubbing a nipple a beautiful arch to meet his thrusts all the better. He had been witness to the invention and endurance of many instruments during his existence, but none had ever proved more satisfying to play than what flesh and bone offered. Watching Jim’s features finally derail with sweet, selfish elation while he took it upon himself to bounce on his cock like mad craving the friction, hands clawing at John’s shoulders for support the latter meant to pull each string till they snapped. 

John had many names, far as his existence reached. Some of them too long to be spoken without halting one's breath, others too old and alien to pronounce them correctly, still used in modern society without attracting suspicious, prejudiced glances. He had chosen the pseudonym "John Ryder" for simplicity's sake, so as not to confuse the people of today. John seemed to have degenerated into an anonymous name while Ryder implictly warned about what his main occupation involved before the killing act. He liked modernity, liked the inventions made, the machines, the roaring engines, the crushing wheels and the hard, unyielding sheet metal that glowed like magma in the sun and yet did not melt. Went up in flames at best, boastful explosion, heads severed and smouldering as they rolled across the asphalt. 

He liked the goods produced, the splendid colors artificially enhanced. At times, he even liked the humans using these goods like they had been born to do so and nothing else, sprung from progress, ever busy, ever silly, chasing for something they couldn't have.

He liked how studious they could be. How coquettishly they behaved for each predator in sight and reach. And perhaps, most of all, how sweet and awful and numerous the rebound of their sounds would be depending on the way he used his hands on Jim Halsey them. And knives on everybody else.

There was something about Jim Halsey that made John Ryder falter in his mind's steps, and it might not even have been particular in nature.

The way his toes curled in helpless manner when he he changed his angle ever so slightly, hitting his prostate with one precise stroke before ravishly pounding into it, unrelenting in pace even when short nails scratched down his shoulderblades in answer, digging their signature by drawing rivulets of blood this vessel depended on yet he did not.

Those dazzling curls falling into eyes too inebriated by primal pleasure for their owner to care that he was fucked raw by a madman, a steppe wolf, a dripping, spitting slaughterhouse on legs.

But the madman didn’t think that far. Never did. Yet. For he was the farthest from mad a man would even have been able of dreaming.

What was there to worry? As the circumstances they both were under would have it, he had all the time in the world to do with Jim as he pleased, or rather, as long as Jim’s biorhythm allowed them to go on before he started to wilt right down the grave, as all creatures did. Everyone except him. The hitchhiker from hell.

Later, as the sun stitched a holey blanket of gold across their heaving, sweat-soaked forms, young head tucked against his chest, curls plastered against the yet unharmed nape of his neck, thumb grazing against a smooth cheek while specks of their mingled cum dried on the seat upholstery, he decided to make the most of it.

In the end, the guillotine’s blade would fall on their world all the same. Why not enjoy its illusion till then.


End file.
